How do you paper mini?

[MoonHunter]

I like making cardboard squares. Each square has a top, where a Portrait is normally placed. About 4/5s the way down, there is a horizontal line. This lower box has the character's name. This is most important when you have dozens of Mooks and thugs... (here is ninja 4, ninja 5, and ninja 6, and here is Ninja Badass 2, etc).

The Heroe/ Villians often have masks of the appropriate color on their squares. Most of these are Domino mask, others are "Lone Ranger" styled, while other are cowlish. I have no real art talent, but these are better than keeping track of which odd die is which being.

"How did Maestro get over there... Did you roll him? Again?!"


However, my players are seldom in "tactical" situations, where miniatures are needed. When they are in tactical sitautions, they are usually resolved fast enough that it would of taken longer to draw out the situation or just use a rough map and a few dice.

How do you all do it?

[Tomahawk]

My players here really seem to like the paper minis for some reason- even when doing relatively simple things like going shopping!

I'm one of the fortunate folks who still has the 25mm Stand-up paper figures from the Marvel Super-Heroes (MSH) Advanced set and revised Basic set (I've got some others too, just haven't ever cut them out or put them together). These get used alot.

For those who aren't familiar with these stand-ups, they're slightly different than the ones Silverback has here; They are comprised of three panels- 1)a right-side front view; 2) a mirror image left-side front view; and 3) a back view. Each one stands a total of 30mm (3cm), which includes a bit of space above and below the figure depicted on the mini.

I've found these to be very practical, as the three-panel format makes it very easy to determine which direction the character is facing (and where they have their back turned to...)

For those we've made ourselves, we've used Heromachine (or similar) images, done a bit of shrinking, and plugged the images (along with a mirrored image and a black shillouette or simply the name of the character to designate "rear") into a scaled paper-mini model. (Fwiw, all of this work can easily be done in Paint- no fancy graphics programs required!)

When it comes down to playing, we're usually using one of the poster-sized maps that came along with the MSH sets, including the extra maps from the Fault Line adventure, New York, NewYork, and the Deluxe City Campaign set (the latter of which is already scanned and being OCR worked even as we speak- right Silverback? ). These maps are already scaled for the "areas" system inherent in the MSH rules, so doing everything with these is a piece of cake.

Recently however, we also started doing a bit of other things with the scenery and such, using some of the stand-up buildings from Microtactix's "Twilight City" series (I broke down and bought the basic set...). Those buildings, streets, etc. fit perfectly to scale with the minis we already, and puts everything into a 3D perspective.

The only real bummer there is cutting out all of the buildings and fitting them together, also setting up the whole scene takes time (never mind the fact that I have to keep an eye on my 2-year old, who likes to run off with characters or buildings at whim...)

Using these, we've had to do a bit of conversion from "areas" to feet & yards/ meters, but it really goes quick when you use the "eyeball" rule and don't get too hung up on exact measurements.

("Sorry BattleBob, but your figure is exactly .01mm too far away from the bad guy to hit him with your MegaBlast- you'll have to move closer if you want to hit him...")

So... That's how we usually do it :-)

[Silverback]

Tomahawk said:

When it comes down to playing, we're usually using one of the poster-sized maps that came along with the MSH sets, including the extra maps from the Fault Line adventure, New York, New York, and the Deluxe City Campaign set (the latter of which is already scanned and being OCR worked even as we speak- right Silverback? ).

The Campaign Book is currently undergoing typesetting.

SB